To want to know a light-hearted childhood fear?

[GeorgeAndTimmyTheDog]

What I mean is you can possibly laugh about it now.
For instance because of reading the Unexplained magazine growing up I was convinced I was going to "Self human combust" as that was an article in there.
Also an adult told me that bleach "Makes things smaller" so I was petrified to sit on the loo if I could smell bleach as I thought my bottom would disappear.

I was really scared going past those massive bombs inn he street. Shells, I was sure they were called. Not sure how I knew: maybe I'd learnt it from the news, from a war report? (I grew up in the Scottish countryside so no real reason to be scared of bombs)

Turns out they were just grit bins.

Quicksand. I think I watched too much 999 and was convinced there was swathes of it all over every beach just waiting to suck me down to my death!

Quick sand and spontaneous human combustion where never the great issue that I thought they were going to be.

I was also afraid of the toilet flush, at night.
To get back to my bedroom from the toilet in our big old farmhouse I had to walk past the top of the stairs. Not only was it as dark as a cave at the bottom of the stairs but the top of the stairs is where the ghost was (for ‘real’). If I could get back in bed before the toilet stopped flushing then I would be safe.

The Bermuda Triangle

Piranhas

Quicksand

Crocodiles getting into my bedroom

I grew up in a 3rd floor flat in a city (in the UK) so none of these things were likely to happen.

The Open University fanfare

My friends little boy was scared shitless of the Dolmio puppets

He's all grown up now and we tease him about it 😜

If a seed landed in my eye, it would grow. Thanks Readers' Digest!

I was petrified of the plug hole in the bath. It was the noise and the suction, I was terrified of getting sucked into it! 😀

I was scared of hedgehogs, saw an advert when I was small where a giant hedgehog ran over vehicles I think it was for a beer or something

Oh god, also the dancers in the Elton John video I'm Still Standing

😂😂😂😂🤣
It sounds like a threat a parent would use "If you don't stop that I'm ringing Trevor McDonald"
@WFHbore2023
That's because The honey monster was downright creepy, he scared me.

Less a fear, more a morbid curiosity….my dad told my younger brother and I that if you didn’t step off the top of an escalator quickly enough you’d get sucked in! We would hover, watching and waiting for some poor too slow person to get sucked into oblivion! Come to think of it, I’m in my 50s now and still step off the top of escalators pretty swiftly!

An asteroid hitting the earth and wiping us out. I had my mum move my bed under the window and would fall asleep watching the night sky. Would spend hours debating whether a light in the sky was a plane, a star or imminent death.

I was also irrationally afraid of the chance of another world war, tornadoes and wolves eating everyone I loved. I was quite a strange child.

Grotbags the witch.

That if I went camping, a beetle would get in my ear and eat through my brain and out of the other ear.

Not that I ever went camping anyway.

I was scared that a shark would swim up the toilet and bite me 🤣 until I was maybe 8/9

Oh and dolls - those Victorian porcelain faced ones.
A local museum had a dolls room, all staring at you, so horrific I couldn't go in.

The intro of a tv show called Tales of Edgar Wallace. I’ve no idea what the show was like as I’ve never seen a single episode because the title sequence had me shitting myself.

After Jurassic park came out in the cinema I saw a bit on the news about how they thought scientists could use gene technology to actually being dinosaurs back. I was fucking terrified...genuinely thought that dinosaurs would come back within weeks and I dreamt that a T rex was chasing me around the school playground.

I've known quite a few adults who won't have anything at all to do with yellow at all and one that won't touch anything green which must be even harder to avoid.

I went through a stage of thinking the toilet would explode when I flushed it. So I would wash my hands, open the door and be ready, flush and then run!
I also got a bit confused about blood donations and thought once you turned 18 your blood would be forcibly taken from you, so I was terrified of getting older (I was about 6 at this time)

OMG so many of these (I was quite neurotic)

Wolves (I think due to the number of stories they featured in)
Volcanoes (I think we did Pompeii at school)
Cranes (so huge)
Accidentally saying Bloody Mary 3 times in the mirror at midnight (as you do)
Swallowing chewing gum
The Earth losing it's gravity
Fire (chip pans in the 70s!)
I'm sure there was more..

@SoupDragon I was scared of them too. Earthquakes also terrified me. Bristol isn't known for them.

Forklifts, they absolutely terrified me as a child, something about the forks, the were somehow less scary fully loaded 🤷‍♀️

I'm now in a construction related industry and I'm a stickler for H&S when in the yard and on site.

Same, but it was crocodiles. Quite how they'd fit in the 1 inch gap between my cabin bed and wall I have no idea, but I was convinced 🙈